I grew up in Japan, surrounded by spaces that were quiet and considered in ways I took for granted as a kid. Not the grand ones — the everyday ones. A machiya organized around a narrow interior garden. A tea room where every dimension had been arrived at for a reason. You notice that as a child without knowing what you're noticing.

The architects I keep returning to work at that same scale. Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo, whose practice was built on studying everyday Japanese domestic architecture — the modest house, the narrow lot, the considered small thing. Mason St. Peter in LA, where the material decisions are always visible and always earned.

I came to building after a decade leading product and design teams, with one durable obsession: the decisions that seem small at the start are usually the ones that matter most. My graduate work in sustainable energy systems at the University of Michigan added a technical lens to the aesthetic one — materials, thermal performance, how a building works from the inside out. I'm a licensed Oregon general contractor (CCB #259670).

Kindred is where that lands: a design-build studio in Portland, currently focused on custom saunas and expanding into ADUs, studios, and homes. The same sensibility throughout — natural materials, considered proportions, nothing added that doesn't earn its place. I hold the full process, from design through permitting through finishes, because the person who draws it should be the same person who builds it.

Some of the best projects are shared ones. I regularly build alongside landscape designers, interior designers, and architects — Bethany Rydmark Landscapes, Wildscape Gardens' Tari Gunstone among them — and I know how to be one part of a larger vision: clear scope, clean coordination, a build that honors the design intent.

If you have a project in mind — or a client who does — let’s chat.